Summer Internship: National Advocates for Pregnant Women

By: Steph Kraft Sheley

I worked this summer at National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) in New York City. NAPW is a national legal advocacy organization that works to safeguard the rights and welfare of pregnant and parenting people. NAPW recognizes that low income people, people of color and drug-using people are the most vulnerable to punishment for the outcomes of their pregnancies.  NAPW challenges such attempts at punishment through litigation and litigation support. NAPW also provides public education on the issues of pregnancy and drug use.

My main task throughout the summer was to draft legal memoranda related to two cases in which pregnant women were criminally punished for the outcomes of their pregnancies. The purpose of these memos was to research in-depth specific areas of state law and analyze how the law might be applied to those cases. One of the cases for which I drafted a memo is approaching appeal at the state high court level, while the other has yet to go to trial.

Along with my work on legal memoranda, I gathered information about other cases that NAPW tracks, and performed additional legal research tasks as the need arose. I had the opportunity to visit the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, the United Nations, the Innocence Project, the Vera Institute and the Feminist Press, among other organizations. I also demonstrated with NAPW, Support. Don’t Punish., and the Drug Policy Alliance in front of the United Nations in support of drug policy reform.

I lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn and took full advantage of living and working in NYC. Highlights included visiting the Mmuseumm, seeing Fish in the Dark on Broadway, and purchasing some of my most coveted out-of-print titles at Strand Book Store.

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